


Snapshots

by freckleslikeconstellations



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Art References, Death, Established Relationship, Everlasting Love, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Frustration, Honeymoon, Italian landmarks, Italy, Milan, Sadness, Sexual References, Sunshine - Freeform, Wedding, filming memories, ghost/spiritual references, red wine, story versus reality, truly understanding someone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 04:18:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14633927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freckleslikeconstellations/pseuds/freckleslikeconstellations
Summary: Mycroft and you take one last trip together.





	Snapshots

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for your support. :) 
> 
> The type of ghost we have here plays by the same kind of rules as the ones did in the film, 'Ghost,' if you're wondering, in the way that they react to elements/people though there is in particular one notable exception, which you'll know if you have seen the film when you come to it. It doesn't matter if you haven't seen the film though. :)

Reality plays like one of those old black and white film reels, but it’s not a particular thing that you want to watch right now, so you tell yourself a story instead, not knowing that reality will seep into that too. Not knowing that the man you miss is right beside you. 

 

“Your job means that we’d have tickets to Leonardo da Vinci’s _‘The Last Supper,’ ”_ is how your story begins, bright and fresh and vivid. “We’d have our quarter-of-an-hour. The refectory attached to the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie would be cool. It would almost be a relief from the hot day. I’d be in a long-sleeved, white cotton t-shirt.” You close your eyes now. Your eyelashes swoop in what looks like a painful manner against your s/c skin. Everything hurts now, even eyelashes, and especially the tale you’re beginning to tell. 

 

Mycroft Holmes stares at you from where he has slid down the wall, knees up to his chest watching you on the bed. If he weren’t already dead then he would want to drown in your story. Get lost in it like he’d once done walking from his parents’ cottage in foul weather. He wouldn't have usually gone out in such a thing, but he’d been in a dark mood and had, had to get out of there. Snow had swirled around him, but that is not how he’d died. That had happened years ago. He’d had to be rescued by a helicopter back then. Sherlock had told people the comical tale for weeks; he probably still does. 

 

“Sunglasses would be attached to your collar,” he adds, closing his own eyes, “Your hair would look lighter because of the sun, whilst your eyes would dart about, as you tried to take everything in. Your hands would fidget around the rolled up schedule that you’d already printed off, as we’d shuffle forwards in the queue. You wouldn't be allowed to use a camera in there, but the one that you film as much as you can with would be in your bag.” He smiles, picturing you now and remembering how since coming to Britain you’d taken to filming and appreciating a lot of your day. Taking in the seasons, the people. You’d filmed some of your dates with him, even if the camera was slightly off-kilter and only picked up the sound of your soft voices talking over red wine. Patches of which you’d turned into black and white sequences, which you’d given to him. How he’d like to watch them all again. _Click._

 

You must be thinking about the camera too, or perhaps only of him and what has happened. He can see the pain beneath your scrunched up eyelids. How the autumn leaves must have fallen from nearly bare trees into a fresh puddle that Saturday. How the ripples had spread out from them and caused shockwaves. He shivers and opens his eyes. Tries not to think of them. _Click._

 

“Your hand would be upon my back, just a delicate reminder of your presence,” you say, further getting him out of that dreadful memory, or perhaps it is merely an imprint on him now because he is dead after all. Trying to avoid reality you bury yourself in the story again, “Every now and then you’d make some remark-an off-hand quip about how this better be worth the wait,” you go on keenly and he chuckles. “Or a dry comment about someone’s choice of clothing.”

 

“Well, they are so often atrocious,” he informs you now. “That large woman is sweating all over the floor already in those thick trousers. Someone will have to run after her to collect all the droplets.” 

 

“You wouldn't exactly be wearing sensible clothing either in your dark suit. Thank goodness you didn't wear a three-piece one. Autumn in Italy is hot enough. The top few buttons of your light blue shirt would be undone. You’d still look smart, but…” you trail off in a blush.

 

He quirks an eyebrow at you. “The sheen upon my chest hair would be enough to get you anticipating later?” He practically smirks. 

 

You nod and for a moment he wonders if you’ve heard him, but then you jerk forwards slightly and clear your throat and he feels sure that you haven’t. That you’d just been lost in your own musings. 

 

“You’d be mine then.” Your finger moves in a circle on top of the duvet cover. 

 

“I am still yours,” he reminds you, getting up and going to sit on the edge of the bed, his back to you. He is not quite sure how he does so. He’d sunk into his own body before, after-“Perhaps I’d say, ‘See something you’d like?’ and you’d reply, _‘You.’”_ He cannot go back to the incident. Not again. “We’d kiss and smile, pulling away of course before we ever caused a scene. I know how loud you can get.” His hand brushes against the bed cover now and he feels an ache inside him. His smile is pained. “But you’d be glad that I hadn’t worn a tie that day.”

 

You smile, recovering at the thought of him being all yours and yours alone and pulling yourself together. “Nothing and nobody could have done anything about that.” You clear your throat. “Of _course…”_

 

He knows what you’re trying to say. “Look at where we are F/N. You can’t even see me,” his voice is agonized. “No,” he grows solemn, “You are exactly where you should be. It is me…” 

 

 _Click._ Reality intrudes once more and the pair of you are back in that moment again. The door of a busy apartment opens out onto traffic; the black cab pulls up by the kerb. The bride. Oh _God_ the bride. Mycroft can picture you, as you would have looked then. So beautiful-exiting the apartment and swishing up to the taxi as gracefully as you could, ivory column dress with its lace around the collarbone, which flared around your arms, but thankfully was easily kept off the floor, mother fussing after you, hair partly covered by a veil, tiny roses upon your damp locks to match those in your bouquet-and so different to how he’d later watched you, as you’d practically thrown the bouquet to your mother and watched him, as you’d finally arrived at the church, being carried away onto an ambulance. _Click._

 

You see yourself adjusting your hold on the bouquet, as you’d opened the door of the cab. You’d been ignoring your clucking mother when you’d gone incredibly still. Something, somehow, had told you that things had gone wrong. _Very_ wrong. Your manicured fingernails, a rare treat from you from your usually chipped style-had tightened around the bouquet. _Click._ You don’t want to think about that now. You breathe oddly, trying to get yourself out of it, hands gripping onto the bedsheets, whilst Mycroft watches you concernedly. Are you about to have a panic attack? You’ve never had one before, but you do have the tendency to work yourself up sometimes.

 

“We’d be serious in front of the painting, at least for a while anyway,” you manage to say and Mycroft feels relieved at your tone colouring the gloom again. Your lips quirk upward, as if you know, somehow _know_ that he is there and you are effecting him. 

 

“Your hands would stop fidgeting and we’d just stare,” he says, feeling encouraged. “Our eyes would take in all the emotions of the disciples and then Jesus himself. You’d wonder what it would be like if you didn't have long left.” He does not look at you. “You’d shiver and my hand would move from your back to your shoulder. I’d hold you close…how I want to hold you close.” He looks back at you wistfully. 

 

“I’d want to keep looking at the painting. I’d want to appreciate all of the time I had with it and use my eyes as the lens.” He gets the sense that you’re not talking simply of the painting now. “So few get to see it. _Truly_ see it.” You look off to the side now and for a moment it is as if you are looking right at him, wanting to _believe-_

 

“I'm here,” he says, releasing the breath that he feels like he’s holding, even though again he doesn’t get how that can be, but you look in front of you once more.

 

“I’d probably be starting to get a bit too serious by that point and so you’d say something like how you were glad that your brother wasn’t there with his chemicals to risk spoiling it all,” you want to turn to humour, to the story, to get the weight that feels like it has settled upon your chest away.

 

“The world can certainly do without Sherlock damaging the little art it has left,” Mycroft agrees, wanting you to go on. 

 

You sniffle and recover a little. “We’d go to the place we’d be staying next. Leonardo da Vinci’s old vineyard, just across the road.”

 

“So many dreams my dear. How I wish I’d helped you complete them all.”

 

“The vineyard got destroyed in the Second World War, but it’s growing back now and though it’s still a few years away from being able to produce wine we’d go on a tour of the house and grounds.” You duck your head. 

 

“You’d wonder if anyone had kissed between the grapes,” he reads you. 

 

“I’d wonder if anyone had ever made out in the vineyard. Silly I know.” You rake a hand through your hair and duck your head. 

 

“It isn’t.” He balances in front of you now and not being able to touch at your knee stares imploringly at you instead. Your eyes glisten with the foolish want and longing of it all. 

 

“At the end of the tour we’d be offered some nibbles and wine and grow a little loud. I’d laugh when people would look our way, but I’d stop quickly.” You nod and knead your hands against your knees and Mycroft wishes that he could grasp at them and stop all your fidgeting. “I know you don’t like it.” You can’t use past tense, not yet, and Mycroft finds himself feeling glad for it. “Us doing anything to draw attention to ourselves just in case we suffered for sticking our heads above the parapet. I don’t see what’s wrong with laughing though.”

 

 _“Nothing,”_ he’s firm now. “Nothing is.” He wishes he’d never kept you from laughing, wishes that he hadn’t ever had to worry about security. Wishes the world could have always been a safe haven for you…He touches at your hand with the back of his, wishing that it would brush against it solidly instead of partly dipping through your flesh. How is it that he can sit on a bed, but not even hold your hand any more? Not even offer you any comfort? He growls in frustration, remembering how you’d fallen apart, as you’d held a framed photograph of the pair of you together, whilst you’d tried to get your dress off at the same time. He’d wanted to hold you then. Tell you not to go to the morgue. That you shouldn't even dare see him in that way. Of course you’d gone there and he’d watched, as with a shaking breath you’d said that you loved him and offered a quick, shaky peck to his nose when no one had been looking-you hadn’t allowed your mother in with you and it had been the morgue attendant’s first day. They’d been embarrassed by the sight of you. Your teardrop is probably still on Mycroft’s face… 

 

“We could be as loud as we wanted to though in La Vigne di Leonardo,” your soft voice surprises him now and not for the first time he feels grateful for it. You’d, you _are,_ he reminds himself, for he is still somehow here, so good at doing that, getting him out of his deep, almost like meditation like stance, knocking on the door of his mind palace and always offering a smile his way. The once full shelves of his brain-so full that some of the information had threatened to topple off the shelves-is an imprint now too though he supposes. He hopes that he will always remember everything in it and tests himself. 

 

“A restored sixteenth-century palace it contains four spacious apartments that are full of light.” He is thrilled to remember what he had read online. “Me being me I would have rented it all out”-

 

“You would have rented it all out,” you say and he smiles indulgently at you, glad that you have come to the same conclusion. 

 

“Anything to see you smile.” He’s wistful.

 

“The kitchen would be open and bright,” you continue, in full thrall now, “Old wooden beams above us. The furnishings all traditional. We would have laughed and danced and swayed and been a bit silly as we’d taken turns to cook. High off Italy and one another.” You draw your clenched hands to your chest. Your eyes close again. “Your hands would press upon my waist. Your body would push close. I’d hum in contentment in front of the stove and put a hand down over yours. It wouldn't matter if your lips rubbed a mark into my neck. No one would see. Besides, I’ve got enough light scarves.” Your hands flick against your hair. 

 

“I’ve bought you many of them.” Still in front of you he closes his eyes hungrily, remembering how much fun he’s had popping into various stores over the years-all across the world-to see what he could try and find for you. You always react so delightedly whenever he does so and with as much surprise as you had that first time when he’d bought you back a charm bracelet from Japan that had little representations of the country dangling from it. The art in Japan being so quirky and bold had reminded him of you and he’d wanted to get you a special keepsake despite the fact that you hadn’t been officially dating back then. He’d heard about all the places you’d wanted to visit when he’d found out your job was a travel agent. You’d babbled on about them for a little while, before you’d realized what you were doing and clammed up, as you blushed a startled baby pink. You weren’t usually so talkative in front of strangers. He’d found your enthusiasm and the fact that something inside of him must have helped encourage you thrilling. You’d confessed that you ran the agency out of one of the less up market places in London and hoped that in time you might be able to move to somewhere a little nicer. He’d loved you all too soon, but perhaps that was for the best now. _Click._

 

He sees himself without wanting to outside the church wearing his charcoal and blue slim fit Italian suit. He’d felt jovial, as he’d made to follow his parents and brother inside, making a quip. Then he’d felt someone’s eyes on him. _Click._

 

“The heat would rise between us,” your voice brings him back out of his thoughts and he sees that you are perfectly still now, hands back upon your lap again. “It would drift through the fresh ingredients for salad that we’d bought earlier at a market place and lead to us abandoning the washing up and red wine. My camera, which would be off on the side of the table, would record all of this. Show how later we’d be on the settee, my head upon your lap, your hands running through my hair. Your mouth would pour open words of affection like lava from a volcano, each one hot and passionate in a way they would not have been if we weren’t alone.”

 

“I never did tell you that I love you enough,” he’s regretful. He might have felt such a thing early on, but he’d wasted such a needless amount of time worrying about how it would all work, whether you felt the same and as strongly, and foolishly what other people would think. He tries to touch the back of his hand to your cheek, but once again you don’t feel it. 

 

“We’d go to one of the bedrooms…”

 

You both picture the pull on clothing and the ‘yes, yes,’ of encouragement that would come from the pair of you. He’d devour you slowly, his mouth and nose nuzzling and brushing against your hair, ear lobe, the side of your neck. His mouth would be hot and aching. Your hands would clench and relax upon his shoulders. You’d make a soft noise against him. He’d take you with the confidence he’s grown into. But it would not be the wild force and eagerness of him to finally let go that would make you come undone. You’d be wet and writhing from that, but it would be something much more simple. It would be from the feel of his blistering breath against your breast and he would come unravelled from something similar-the touch of your fingers grinding into his hips, the unexpected thrust of your body as you finished losing yourself, the whispered affection as the sun had set…

 

“The morning would pour sunshine, waking us with the light breeze through the voile curtains. I’d have fallen asleep as you cradled me in your arms.”

 

“Like we so often did,” he murmurs. 

 

“As we both began to stir you’d peck at the goose pimpled skin of my shoulder from where it stuck out over the duvet…we’d end up having sex again.”

 

“It would start because I’d buck against you. I’d be unable to help it because you’d actually be my wife now and it would be morning and I’d be very hard and though I know it’s ungentlemanly my dear”-

 

“I wouldn't mind,” you’re quick to say, as if you’ve heard him.

 

He smiles. “You’d swivel around in the loose white top you’d worn to bed-easy access I always say.” His grin turns roguish. “And plant a hand upon my cheek. We’d kiss and I’d push against you some more, hand travelling down and finding the hard skin of your hip, the soft flesh of your belly.” His eyes roam down and find the relevant body parts. “You’d gasp into my mouth-an elongated moan-as I touched you _there._ I’d pull away from you briefly to see your oval shaped mouth and half-lidded eyes. Your fingers would clutch at my arm.” He can almost feel them there now, pinching into him. “Because what I was doing to you would be almost too much, but not quite. You’d buck against me, but I think we both know my dear that I’d have to wait until you stopped clamping down on those pretty lips of yours and released the first few shuddery breaths as you verged on your peak. I’d fling you onto your back then, as quick as I could, and push into you with more than just my fingers. One of my favourite ways you know. Dominance…surprise. I never did tell you, but I think you knew. You’d wear that look, the one where you’re half-pretending to be cross with me for doing that to you again, making you breathless and on the cusp of everything, but shocking you, before you can properly lose yourself completely. You’d be annoyed with yourself too I shouldn't wager for falling for it once more. I’d know though that it’s also the look that tells me not to stop, never to stop”-

 

“Oh _Christ…”_ You’re thinking of it too now, fingers wanting to pleasure yourself, but mind not letting you because you can’t do this, not tonight. Your eyes are shut, head off to one side. 

 

He watches you for one moment. “My brow would begin to sweat as I concentrated on you, on raising every hair and bringing delight and sensation to every pore of your body. Your hands would cling onto my neck, properly fastening there, as you wouldn't be able to take it any more. Your beautiful face would scrunch up. I’d feel as you clenched and relaxed around me…several times…oh word.” He’d swallow if he could. “I’d feel the rise and fall of your sweaty body beneath mine and attempt to watch you, but I’d be too close to my own pleasure to do so properly and would be forced to close my eyes. I’d try to focus, to not come undone, but you’d lick, actually _lick_ at the mark I have on the side of my neck and I would be putty in your hands.” He watches as your face creases up and your legs twitch, reaching your crescendo just at the thought. You look embarrassed and a little breathless when you next open your eyes again. “I love you,” he murmurs, watching as you push yourself up off the bed, legs a little shaky and find fresh underwear. 

 

“After breakfast,” you clear your throat as you resume the story back on the bed. He smiles at you always trying to remain so focused even though you spend a lot of your time losing yourself in stories and ideas.

 

“My storyteller,” he christens, “That would be your Secret Service name. Though perhaps it’s a bit too of an obvious one. You would have hated mine…you’ll never know it now.” He frowns suddenly. He doesn’t like the thought of you not knowing things, of all those unspoken conversations. 

 

“After breakfast we’d”-you have to consult your plans to remember the exact name and he smiles at you-“We’d head to Pinacoteca di Brera, an art gallery, where we’d see _‘Supper at Emmaus’_ by Caravaggio and _‘Dead Christ’_ by Mantegna. For lunch we’d head south”-he peers over your shoulder at the map you’re now running your finger down-“I’d introduce you to the treat I had when I was last in Italy-panzerotti. It’s a fried pastry triangle stuffed with tomato and oozing mozzarella.” 

 

“It sounds delicious my dear.” He wishes that he’d had a chance to try it. To do all the things he hadn’t done, especially if they involved spending time with you. He feels pain now and the black and white view of the church shimmers in front of him, but you quickly distract him.

 

“You’d like it as much as me, licking your fingers.” A tear begins to slide down your cheek. “I’d be carrying my camera and film it all.” 

 

“Shh. No need to cry.” He is practically on the verge of it himself though, still not understanding how that works. He tries to catch a tear upon your face, but to no avail.

 

“After disposing of our rubbish we’d take in the sight of the Duomo cathedral properly-the food we got is from one of the back streets near by.”

 

“Shh. It doesn’t matter if you can’t remember it all in order. Just tell me the story my love,” he says when he sees you beginning to get flustered. 

 

You swallow several times, trying to get yourself back in order. “Gothic spikes. I’d shield my face from the sun with my hand. It would be boiling. I wouldn't even be wearing full-length trousers that day and you’d actually be dressed down in a light, V-necked top, the sleeves of which would be rolled back to reveal some of the freckles upon your arms.”

 

“You’ve always liked my freckles. Much more than I’ve ever appreciated them I have to say.” He looks down at the bed ruefully.

 

“You’d have your sunglasses on at that point, but more often than not they’d be attached to your collar. You’d be wearing three-quarter length tan trousers and be sockless in your brown Italian shoes. Your hair would be slick with perspiration and the building would look almost pink in the light.”

 

“I’d tell you that the building has both been compared to a wedding cake and a hedgehog. You’d make some quip about John. Though predictable I would have laughed at it all the same.” He hums. You would have swatted him on the arm if you’d ever heard him say such a thing. His face grows more solemn and more robot-like as he says, “I’d tell you that there are a hundred and fifty steps to the roof, three thousand and six hundred statues and a hundred and twenty five spires. That, that pink you’re seeing is because many of the spires have been carved from pink Cadoglia marble. That the tallest spire has the famous gilded copper ‘Madonnina’ atop it and that I hear the view stretches to the Alps on a fine day.” As he remembers that this is a story and one, more importantly, about him and you, he adds, “As people chatted and pigeons clucked all around you’d loop your arm through mine and we’d make our way to it.” He feels this heaviness, as if he is solid again and once more does not understand it. Perhaps love can be imprinted on what’s left of a person too? 

 

You flip through a few more papers of facts, pictures and plans. “We wouldn't see the Alps though,” you say softly. 

 

_“No?”_

 

“There’d be a haze in the distance.” You look up from the documents. 

 

“Like there is now,” he murmurs sadly when you look right at him, but again don’t see. He aches and aches and aches and wonders if you can go mad even in the spirit world. Whether you can die twice? He thinks that, that’s what will happen to him if he has to stay here and watch you everyday without being able to make an impact on you. Have to watch you hurt and not be able to do anything about it…

 

“We’d have a good time though,” you rally yourself and Mycroft thinks that yes you would if the story was all real. “You’d tell me facts.” He smiles at that. He hopes that you’ll always know what he would have done, but senses that you won’t and again this pains him. “I’d appreciate having my own tour guide. That night, rather than feasting in our temporary home, although we’d have to go back there to change, we’d have a romantic Mediterranean meal out and then, our bellies full, we’d head to Teatro alla Scala, the world’s most famous opera house. I’d look at the layers of red velvet and show much appreciation for the gilded balconies and you”- you blush furiously again. 

 

“Why I would show much appreciation for you I think,” he says lightly, knowing where you are going with this and playing along. “I’d stare at you. Your hair would be curly and wet, the same way you had it at our wedding. Your body framed by a full-length fringed black dress, which would have embroidery and sequin embellishments on the bodice and straps. The sun would have affected your skin and the enjoyment that you’d had already from the trip would make you look healthy. You’d sparkle and gleam and look beautiful. More beautiful than anyone ever has any right to see. Maybe more than I did…” His intelligence and the thing he’d prized himself on most throughout his life had meant nothing in the end. He’d had to face death like all human beings did. 

 

“I’d focus on the music and try and get the story of the opera the best I could.” Your moist tongue comes out to dampen your dry lips. “Though I’d be disappointed my Italian still wasn’t up to much.” You scratch at your hair ruefully. 

 

He smiles at you tenderly. “It takes more than one or two evening classes and an attempt to learn at home when you’re tired.” He really would tap you on the knee if he could.

 

“The emotion of the piece would manage to seep into my skin. Into my very soul.” Your eyes are wide. 

 

“There we are then,” he says to you, as if all has not been lost. He wishes you could see how he’s sitting so close to you. 

 

“I’d find myself crying.”

 

“I’d pass you my aquamarine pocket-handkerchief and as I watched you dab at your sparkling eyes I’d want more and more. From you, not the opera my dear. I’d want to show you how much I loved you and because this is just a story and this is meant to be our perfect honeymoon where there are no place for nerves I’d whisper such a thing into your ear.”

 

“We’d make love that night, more gently, but no less passionate. Touching and caressing, just taking everything in.” Once more you seem to look at him and he wishes that you could see him. Wishes that he could show you that love and tenderness.

 

“The next day”-you push your hair back-“Would be split into two. We’d go and see”-you consult your notes-“The Castelle Sforzesco in the morning and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in the afternoon. The first would be your idea of course.” You smile. “You’d bask in the rounded turrets, spacious courtyards and become a little boy again”-

 

“Don’t tell Mummy, but I’d be _your_ little boy.”

 

“At the idea of the secret passageways, which linger in the Renaissance castle. Home to Michelangelo’s final uncompleted sculpture we’d find ourselves looking at it and I…” you trail off, feeling stricken. 

 

“It would occur to you,” he begins gently, “That much of what we have seen has been created by dead people. You’d think of how much responsibility they have left the living, for it is our job- _yours_ now,” he remembers, almost having forgotten himself-“To cherish what they did, preserve and keep the sense of them as a person alive.”

 

“We’d go to one of the oldest and most glamorous shopping malls later that day,” you continue, as if you hadn’t left a gap. “You’d want to treat me, make the most of the knowledge I’d picked up about clothes on our way to getting married.” You pause and he feels bereft too. He should have seen you walking down the aisle. Not seen you for the first time in your dress through the sirens of ambulance and police, for he’d already parted from his body at that time. “I know what suits me now, but I’d want to spoil you too.” You are brisk and he smiles. “We’d visit men’s stores and I’d see you in suits of navy and grey as much as you would see me in tops and dresses, whilst I flourished a new handbag. It would make me happy…going around with you like that. Just spending time with you.”

 

“It would make me happy too.” He attempts to squeeze at your hand. Once more he fails to do so.

 

“Our honeymoon drawing to a close”-and the story too Mycroft surmises ruefully-“We’d spend the last day around the Navigli network of canals. We’d go into vintage shops, galleries and café’s and feel glad that we had the chance to attend the antiques market because it was the last Sunday of the month. My schedule for us would be tucked away. I’d just be enjoying myself, as we pointed out things to one another and talked…I miss you Mycroft.” You bow your head and try hard not to cry. Your body shudders a little. 

 

“I miss you too my dear. I miss you seeing me.” His fingers slip through your own. He misses the way you’d always been able to surprise him with a few words or even the touch of a hand whenever he’d had a tough day and doubted everything. Just like that you’d shown you understood him. That he still had his relationship with you to believe in if nothing else… 

 

“That night, as we sat on one of the balconies of our temporary home and sipped at red wine, we’d gaze out at how the darkening vineyard would look beneath the last flare of sunshine and I would feel, very strongly then, that I would not want to go home to London and rain, even if I was meant to be moving in with you.” You know that you won’t now. It wouldn't be the same without him there. You’ll stay where you are. “I'm sorry,” you say quietly.

 

He doesn’t know exactly what you’re apologizing for, but murmurs, “It’s okay. Truth be told I would not want to return all that much either to a life where the both of us might have started taking the other for granted. I would have just wanted to stay”-

 

“In that moment with you.” You both finish at the same time. 

 

You know that you should rest and go to bed properly then. The funeral that day has drained you and you cannot know that the only person that you actually want to talk to it about is there, so you should rest. Rest as the pouring sunshine of Italy fades. Rest even if you end up just crying some more. But you do not want to rest, so you tell yourself the story again. One more time. _Click._

 

He sees the horror of it, as you begin to repeat yourself. The way he’d looked back, away from the church when he’d sensed those eyes on him. How the bullet had pierced just beneath the blue paisley silk cravat that matched his eyes. How he’d staggered back. His perfect auburn hair had come undone. His pale hand with its slender fingers had risen to cover up the spot that was already bloody upon his white shirt. It had taken a moment for anyone to even realize that anything was wrong. Of course his mother had been the first to. He’d wanted to straighten the hat that matched her name-Violet-even though his body had already sagged into a sitting-up position on the cold, hard patterned floor that was the foyer to the church. He’d been breathless and quite probably going into shock, but wanted to straighten his mother’s damn hat! How stupid of him! And he calls _you_ a goldfish whenever you should fight! He’d reached up a hand and growled frustratedly when his mother had mistakenly taken it with her own. He’d tried to speak, but his words had been jumbled and slurred. His head had fallen back onto the floor. His hand had let go of his mother’s as he’d done so. He could hear the high-pitched babble as voices gathered more around him than people. He’d been aggravated by the sound. He’d wanted to sleep and had closed his eyes. His hand had gone to his chest, before it had dropped down once more. A baritone voice had started speaking to him. Started telling him about a woman’s name. _Your_ name. _Click._

 

The murderer has already been caught thanks to Sherlock’s help and Mycroft feels sure that his brother will work out that the man who had murdered him was just small fry in a much bigger puzzle. That he’ll solve the case completely eventually. He can rely on his brother to do that. The man who had killed him though is not the point here. The point is he is gone, but-

 

You keep telling the story again to forget that it has already ended. _Click._ To forget how you’d stood a few streets away, motionless, as sirens had screamed into the air. _Click._

 

“It is not over,” Mycroft tells you gravely, sensing the route where your mind has gone down, as if he has a map of it in his hands. He looks at you. At those e/c eyes, which had always sparkled with joy and light and enthusiasm, whether you had been talking about travelling or filming something with that camera of yours, snuggling up to him, but how they now sparkle with tears. He feels the unfairness of it all. He takes in your s/c skin, which is blotchy and pale instead of glowing like it would have been on that honeymoon. Those down turned lips, so unusual to see, and he feels this ache, so big, so large inside him, that he thinks he might become solid again from how much it hurts. Of course he does not, but he does know one thing. He knows why he feels this pain and why you do. “It is because love lasts F/N. They say ‘until death do us part,’ but what we had, what we _have…”_ he tries to explain. “Love lasts and we hurt and grow because of it, but we also experience such joy too. Joy I could never have imagined before…” The word ‘you,’ on his lips Mycroft begins to glow, the particles of his soul ready to assemble somewhere else, ready to fade into a new adventure now he knows for sure that the time you've had together won't just end. That it will have always happened and though your grief will fade in time, as is natural, you will always be a part of one another. You dry your eyes with the back of your hand and seem to look at the exact spot he’s in. He knows that what you’re only probably seeing is dust particles, but feels comfort from it, even more so when you smile. 

 

“Love lasts,” you murmur, as if you have heard him and understand.

 

With a smile of his own Mycroft begins to leave you for the last time. Your words seem to spin around him in the atmosphere. Then he is gone, but not truly.


End file.
